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RPlog:A Friendly Dogfight
Main Hangar - Ord Mantell Solo Base's primary hangar is absolutely cavernous, cut deeply into the solid rock of the cliffs rising above New Alderaan. The hangar proper is roughly rectangular, with a gently trapezoidal cross-section reminiscent of the hangars of most New Republic capital ships, albeit much, much wider in scale. It is a feircely utilitarian design, with the only real decoration being the large Republic Seal proudly dominating the back wall. Row after row of bright floodlights illuminate the hangar from overhead, interspersed with heavy utility cranes running on tracks and regular tractor beam emplacements to assist ground crews in their work. The hangar's around-the-clock activities are predominately given over to supporting operation of New Republic starfighters, with rows and rows of the base's sleek craft tucked into recesses in either side when not being prepped for flight, repaired, or serviced after landing. The hangar also commonly serves a variety of smaller Republican craft, handling shuttles and transports to keep the exterior pads free during periods of extra activity, and with the Ground Vehicle Motor Pool directly off of the hangar towards the back, it is quite common to see military cargo and personnel speeders, as well as tanks and artillery, crossing the hangar to the feild outside at least as often as one sees the starfighters. Incom's XJ3 model starfighter is not a common sight, even here at Solo Base. The newer models have not seen much combat time, and this is one of the reasons Luke Skywalker had brought his new version of /Jedi One/ over to the hangar bay inside Solo Base. Sure, the technicians at the Jedi Temple could handle repairs, upgrades, and maintenance, but being a new model, they hadn't worked too intensively on the XJ3. Neither had Luke. He's been there for three hours now, working with a pair of StarOps technicians. Stripped down to his pants and a white tee shirt, there's grease all over Luke's arms, hands and face, his eyes spared by a pair of goggles strapped tightly behind his head. R2-D2 is sitting in his port up top, pivoting around with his appendages extended as he helps them sort out a problem with the portside stabilizers. Flight technicians scatter from one of the smaller landing berths as Wraith One rockets into the hangar of the military base and settles down. Sure, they had been advised by the tower that she was coming in for a landing, but they certainly weren't expecting a chaotic like that one. The thrusters rev up once more before powering down and the E-Wing settles on its landing struts, the canopy opening. A large smirk on her face, Ranma pulls off her helmet to let her hair fall down her back as she moves to climb down from the fighter, "Sorry. Just putting it through its paces. Hasn't been flown since she was nearly knocked out of space." She grins a little as her feet touch down on the flight deck and unzips the front of her flight suit. Slipping her arms from the sleeves, she ties them around her waist to keep the garment from falling off completely and spots the XJ3 and the crew working on it. With a smirk, she starts to make her way over towards them calling out, "You broke it already? I guess I owe a couple of friends some credits on that bet." Bryce steps out of the turbolift as his attention is absorbed in his PDA that is running various simulations. Humming to himself a little as he walks through the hanger not paying any particular attention to where he is going. SUch is the life of a Tactician with not tactical stuff to do. His grey eyes taking in possible scenarios that could occur decades in the future. Luke, R2-D2, and the two technicians are all distracted by the entrance of Ranma and her E-Wing escort starfighter. Their four heads turn in almost perfect time to watch as the ship comes in for a landing, and the two techs in particular seem to get a little googly when she climbs out of the starfighter. "Skim me off a cliff," one of them mutters, only to be jabbed by his fellow in the ribs. He looks aside to his comrade, opening his hands defensively. "What!? It's like a holo-flick, I swear!" If Luke is having the same 'crush-struck' feelings, he hides it well. Instead, the Jedi Master watches the entrance, then the techs, and then Ranma's approach with an ever-growing smirk. He reaches for a rag to wipe off the grease from his hands, and then tosses it at the love-struck tech nearby, forcing him back to reality as he haphazardly snatches it before it can hit him in the face. "I didn't /break/ it," is Luke's defense. "Incom broke it." He points back at the ship again, his eyebrows rising. "Don't worry, once Artoo tightens down the motivator and we run her through warmup, she should be flightworthy." Ranma appears oblivious to the techs' response to her entrance, well with the exception of the couple that run up to her and start yelling at her anyway. To them, she just waves a hand dismissively before continuing to walk, sure she'll hear about it later from her superior. Also she doesn't seem to notice most of the traffic going around the hangar, it would be a mistake to believe she wasn't watching what was going on. Noticing the man walking with the datapad, she offers him a bit of a smile as she adjusts her path so she doesn't run into him. She can't help but laugh at Luke's reply however, "Right. They broke the ship they /KNEW/ was going to be used by the Jedi Master Skywalker, before they delivered." She smirks a little, one of her eyebrows arching slightly, "Somehow I don't believe it for a moment. I think you just forgot how to fly while spending all that time sitting around the Temple." She winks and laughs quietly, "You sure you want those two helping you out though? They look a little distracted to me." Bryce actually looks up briefly, Skywalker is in the building. The man definitely continues his exiting path. His look up costs him however, as his PDA lets out a loud series of beeps. "Oh.. Bantha Fodder," he says. One hand goes up to rub at his temples. "Can't ever seem to get past this date... seems the Republic is doomed to failure in a couple thousand years," the man says as he looks at the PDA, "By the Sith... if my calculations and intelligence are correct..." "Ike, you want to give me that rag back?" Luke is jesting of course, but the buckshot technician turns and offers the rag anyway, which brings a laugh up from Skywalker's belly. He waves his hand at the tech. "No, no. Just go make sure Artoo gets that motivator locked down... and get it done /quick/, will you?" Back to Ranma he cants his head, grinning still. "If you'd like, Ranma, I'll take you up to the training sector and show you I remember how to fly." Luke notices another word, a very familiar word, being spoken by an entirely unfamiliar voice. He looks past Ranma's shoulder, eyeballing Bryce for a moment. As one specific word floats to her ear, Ranma can't help but involuntarily flinch slightly. Sure it had been a good long time since she had gotten free, and almost as long since she had the things that were sent askew in her mind set straight, but it still causes her to remember all the same. Turning her head around, she looks for the source of the voice and lets out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Then shrugging her shoulders a little she turns back to the conversation at hand. Placing her hand on her hip, she smirks and arches an eyebrow, "I dunno. I'd hate to send you back to the Temple licking the wounds of your ego when I wallop ya." She laughs a little and winks, knowing full well she would be the one who lost the engagement. But what fun would it be without a little smack talking. Bryce hears the echo'ing silence after he finished his sentence and he coughs a little. Nothing to see here. The ensign actually blushes, before he continues his walk. Acutely aware of any eyes that are on him. His head hanging down as he resets his PDA simulation and quickly becomes engrossed with it again. Luke is slow to turn his eyes away from Bryce, but he does eventually, flattening out his lips for a second. He isn't one to intrude, especially when his senses aren't cluing him in on anything troublesome. Smacktalking brings the grin back to his face, and then he leans over and gives Ranma a friendly whack o the shoulder. "That's it, you're on." He turns around. "Ike, Jelan, you got that fixed yet?" "Just about, Master Skywalker!" Smirking a bit, Ranma nods her head, "Loser buys dinner then." She turns a little to start heading back to her fighter, "Oh. And I like the expensive restaurants. The ones with the candles and a dress code. Hope you can afford it." She laughs as she finishes turning and unties the arms of her flight suit, slipping her arms back into the sleeves and zipping it up. Skywalker shakes his head, then turns around and grabs a flight jacket from where it hangs over one of his X-Wing's landing struts. He throws it on, zips it up, then starts climbing up into the X-Wing. As R2-D2 starts firing up the main converters, Luke leans over the edge and grins down at the two techs. "I sure hope you two don't let me down today." Then, he throws the helmet over his head, and begins securing it as the cockpit comes down over him. Climbing into the cockpit of Wraith One, Ranma stuffs her hair up under her helmet and lowers the canopy. While Astro runs the ship through its pre-flight checks, she starts the process of clearing out any distractions other than the ships controls and what she see in front of her through the canopy, "Tower, Wraith One requesting permission for take off." A few moments pass while she waits for clearance to depart the hangar. When it comes through, she grins and throttles the engines to take her up into space, plotting a direct course to the sector that has been set aside for fighter training. Following suit, Jedi One forms up behind Wraith One. As the two fighter pilots head up into the sky, New Alderaan disappears beneath them. The training sector is on the other side of the planet, so they have a moment to themselves while heading that way. LUke reaches over and opens a channel. "So, Ranma. You got a nickname you go by during engagements? And... what was the deal with that fellow down there? He had his face buried in that data analyser... you know him?" Grinning behind the visor of her helmet, Ranma clicks on the com to activate her mic, "I do. Surely you've read it in one of your reports. Ya know. From right after Trandosha." She laughs a little before actually giving voice to the name, "Hellcat. I think it's because I was such a trouble maker when I first joined StarOps. Made a lot of friendly enemies at the time." She laughs again and shakes her head. It's more a reflex to answering a question negatively, as there isn't any way he could see her shaking her head, "Dunno. And nope. Though being in the hangar he had to have clearance. So I usually don't give those things much thought. I have to keep an eye out for angry techs when I'm in there." She laughs a little at that, since she is always doing something to cause the techs stress in some manner. "Mmm," notes Luke, nodding his head in much the same fashion. You just get used to it, pretending the other person's there, able to see you. "I could've sworn I heard him say something about the Republic in a couple thousand years. Now, who the bloody hell can calculate /that/ far in advance?" He grins. "Never was much of a math wizard. I suppose it's possib-" R2-D2 interrupts him by bleeping and blapping out a rapid disagreement in binary. "Well, I guess that settles it," relents Luke. By now, Ord Mantell is a sphere below them, and his scanner indicates that they've just about reached the training sector. "Solo Base, this is Jedi One. Requesting permission to utilize training sector Auresh. Is the sector clear?" A moment later, the response comes. "Copy that, Jedi One. Training Sector Auresh is clear for use." As the scanner indicates that they have entered the training sector, Ranma toggles the throttle to max and pulls the E-Wing into a rolling dive, towards the small asteroid field that takes up part of the sector, clearly she didn't plan on making this easy on Luke, "I wouldn't know. Best I am with math is astrogation. And I don't really think about that. Let the computer do most of the work." She laughs a little as she pulls the fighter into a tight arc around one of the larger chunks of rock, "Age before beauty, Hon. Catch me if you can." Out of habit, she winks as she clicks off her mic and begins to weave in and out of the pieces of debris. "Artoo." The droid responds by opening the X-Wing's s-foils. They snap open much faster on this model, and the energy brings a brightness to Luke's visor-shielded eyes. "Cycle blasters down to minimal power output," he instructs, and immediately takes up the chase. He pushes the throttle to maximum, and begins focusing his Jedi instincts upon the ship that he's chasing. Jedi One rolls over its X-axis twice before skimming the asteroid so close that R2-D2 wishes he could duck. "Aww, you flatter me." His fingers feather the controls, which have been personally re-calibrated to allow for a more finely-tuned operation. His index gently squeezes the trigger, sending a bolt of energy out and into one of the asteroids. It blows into pieces, providing more than enough of a distraction for Ranma, considering she's headed right for it! The exploding asteroid doesn't phase Ranma in the slightest, instead she adjusts her course to fly through the center of where it had been floating. As soon as she passes through, she drops the throttle to nothing and kicks the port-side repulsers to high, causing the craft to spin 180-degrees so she is facing the other direction and slamming the thruster home to burst back through the dust headed straight for Jedi One at full speed. The lasers powered down to the lowest setting, she grin, "Astro, divert power from the rear shields to the front." As the shield power fluctuates during the reconfiguration, she depresses the firing stud and lets loose a volley of fire towards the other fighter, never wavering her course. Jedi One bears down on Wraith One until, at the last possible moment, she twirls aside to avoid Ranma's incoming fire. With his instincts running high, Luke guides his XJ3 through a series of twists and turns, every move cutting excruciatingly close to the passing asteroids of various size. "If you want to see beauty, Hellcat, watch this." Knowing that she has little choice but to give chase, Luke pushes his joystick forward and twists it ever so slightly to the side. Jedi One goes into a diagonal nosedive, and as she does, Luke engages the dorsal repulsors. This allows him to keep accelerating, without maintaining a perfectly circular motion. Any normal pilot would grow dizzy as the astroids float by, but not only does Luke hold his brain in one piece, he also has enough mind to jink the X-Wing from side to side, narrowly avoiding collisions as he goes. Meanwhile, he keeps his senses trained for her to try cutting across, so that he can react and catch her in his sights. As she shoots past Jedi One, Ranma grins a little as she arcs around a piece of rock, getting close enough to it to allow the little bit of gravitational pull it has to sling shot her back in the direction she had come from, "Not bad. I've seen better though." Instead of aiming her lasers at Jedi One, Ranma decides to start exploding some of the smaller chunks of debris as Luke moves to avoid them, hoping the shower of rock distracts him as she races across the the surface of a larger asteroid in front of Jedi One. Jedi One's shields light up as some of the debris is incinerated by them. Luke flies right through them, scowling a little. "Artoo, how are the emitters?" R2-D2 bleeps a response back, but Luke doesn't need to read the translator. He knows that message well enough. "Alright then, switch deflectors off until the nodes are recharged." Then, Luke drops the throttle and performs a tight curl around one of the asteroids, inverting his flight path. He immediately follows by banking around to starboard, losing sight of Ranma's E-Wing as it curls around her asteroid. "Hiding behind a large chunk of rock ain't gonna help you, Ranma," he calls into the com. Meanwhile, he noses Jedi One up, expecting to see the nose of her fighter coming around the other hemisphere of that asteroid... and right into his crosshairs. He begins firing... it'll be a direct hit unless she anticipates and diverts her course! Well, she hadn't anticipated it. And the magnetic field generated by some of the asteroids makes the sensors less than reliable. As she peaks over the horizon of the asteroid the laser fire slams into her shields, causing the craft to shake slightly. Reflexes kicking in, she rolls the fighter along the surface of the chunk of rock, her wing tips barely missing the surface as she somehow manages to avoid the second volley of fire. She can't resist commenting as it happens, or more precisely, she can't keep her mouth from saying, "Aw. Blowing kisses at my stomach. How sweet." Her voice is thick with humor as she levels the fighter out and kicks the throttle back to full chasing after Luke's vessel. The shields around Jedi One shimmer back to life as he crosses Ranma's viewing plane. Keying the com, he quips back at her. "I usually don't favor expensive restaurants, but if you insist..." He can't help but grin widely at the responsiveness of this XJ3. Feathering the controls, he sends the X-Wing into a rapid dance with a flurry of motions, banking around asteroids and baking through the debris left by their interference with the field. Ranma laughs as she chases after Jedi One, "Oh. It was only going to be expensive if you were paying. I lose, we're eating out of a vending machine." She smirks a little behind the mic as she weaves around the debris lining up a shot aimed towards the engines of the XJ3. She was obviously kidding about the vending machine, if there was one thing she was better at than flying, it was talking smack. And given her upbringing, she had the colorful language to go with it if needed. "I'll turn that ship of yours into a vending machine," retorts Skywalker. He lets her chase him freely, gives her full sway to line up her shot. At the last minute, however, he throws power to the port thrusters and drops the thruttle to 1/2 reverse. The XJ3 tears off to the left and screams past Ranma's E-Wing, even as her blasters go off. Laughing out loud as Wraith One rips past him, Luke punches the throttle back up, while laying on the cannons with his other hand. -blat- -blat- -blat- -blat- The bolts scream toward Wraith One! Over all, it was a skirmish Ranma fully expected to lose. But that's half the fun anyway. She grins a little at his remark, "Oh, come on Skywalker. You can do better than that. Besides, if you do that, I'll be stuck floating out here in space and you wont get to see the outfit I planned for dinner." She laughs a little and in her attempt to be distracting, had only distracted herself. All of the shot hit her shields which begin to flicker and then die out. Without realizing she had left the com on, she lets out a string of curses that would make a Hutt Crimelord blush. Getting control of the fighter, she carefully takes it out of the asteroid field, "Well, looks like you win this round. I guess dinner is on me." She smirks a little as she stresses the word 'on' trying to get a slight rise out of the Jedi as she pulls the throttle to 1/4 speed. She's right, he /can/ do better, but he's too bashful. In fact, while he watches her shields flicker and fail, her words echo around in his head and he squirms with a touch of discomfort, the kind that's brought on when someone is flat out flirting with you. The girl's a firecracker and a half, proven by the string of curses that are broadcast through his helmet. He laughs at that, and it loosens him up a little... having matured around Han, he could handle vulgarity like that, even if it wasn't something that came out of his own mouth often enough. Disengaging, he moves to form up alongside of her, speeding up to match her pace while releasing the XJ3's s-foils. "/On/ you?" he repeats, turning his helmetted head to look at her through their cockpit windows. "Oh, okay," he quips, smirking. "So, you /are/ naked under that jumpsuit. I get it." He winks at her, and brings his hand up to form a thumbs-up. "Dinner outfit, mm hmm." He turns around before she can see his face lighting up with red embarrasment, and guns his throttle as he heads back toward Solo Base. Looking through the canopy, Ranma laughs, "Well, ya know. Figuratively speaking." She smirks and nods to the thumbs up, "And you know quite well that I have something on under this flightsuit, or I wouldn't have unzipped it back at the hangar. Well at least not with all those technicians standing around." She grins a little and laughs. Laughing into his open com with Wraith One, Luke replies, "Right, right. Well then, let me see. Oh-eight-hundred hours, Belleau-a-Lir, corner of Twenty-seventh and Ploo?" Friendly Dogfight, A